bob

"making a big-screen biopic of the prophet Muhammad. Budgeted at around $150m (£91.5m), the film will chart Muhammad's life and examine his teachings. Osborne told Reuters that he envisages it as "an international epic production aimed at bridging cultures.....In accordance with Islamic law, the prophet will not actually be depicted on screen." - bob from Bookmarklet

Yes Gabe. It's a steam punk film - Becca

"The latest surge came a day after the International Monetary Fund announced it sold 200 tonnes of gold to India's central bank over a two-week period last month for a total of 6.7 billion dollars to bolster its finances. The IMF said the transaction, which was in the process of being settled, involved daily sales that were phased over a two-week period during October 19-30. A senior IMF official said that the IMF was "lucky" in selling the 200 tonnes to India for roughly 1,045 dollars an ounce. The deal represented around half the IMF's planned sale of its gold reserves." - bob from Bookmarklet

Shock, surprise, how unexpected. What could possibly happen next?, he wondered. - Alex Scrivener

Voracek found that "higher feminized" digit ratio in men correlated with stronger paranormal and superstitious beliefs, "even when controlled for age, education, adult height and weight, and birth length and weight." "Shorter feminized" digit ratios in women also correlated with a greater likelihood of superstitious beliefs, as did a woman's lighter weight at birth. For both sexes, shorter body length at birth was associated with later beliefs in superstitions and the paranormal. The findings help to support the conclusions of Kia Aarnio and Marjaana Lindeman, both University of Helsinki psychologists who have extensively studied the propensity for paranormal and superstitious beliefs. They found that women are much more likely to have such beliefs, which the researchers attribute to "higher intuitiveness and lower analytical thinking." Based on the recent study, it now appears that men born with at least one feminine-associated characteristic may have greater intuitiveness as well, possibly explaining why these men, like some women, are more inclined to hold paranormal and superstitious beliefs. - bob from Bookmarklet

"cemented" seems like the wrong word. It's kind of like saying that someone's profession is cemented before birth. - Paul Buchheit

"The average silver content of milk from different cities across the United States in 1968 varied between 0.027 and 0.054 ppm." - bob from Bookmarklet

"Nearly twice the height of the spaceship it's supposed to replace — the shuttle — the skinny experimental rocket carried no passengers or payload, only throwaway ballast and hundreds of sensors. The flight cost $445 million....It was the first time in nearly 30 years that a new rocket took off from Kennedy Space Center. Columbia made the maiden voyage for the shuttle fleet back in 1981....The ballistic flight did not come close to reaching space and, as expected, lasted a mere two minutes. That's how long it took for the first-stage solid-fuel booster to burn out and separate from the mock upper stage 25 miles up. But it will take months to analyze all the data from the approximately 725 pressure, strain and acceleration sensors. Parachutes popped open and dropped the booster into the Atlantic, where recovery ships waited. The upper portion of the rocket — all fake parts — were hurtled to an estimated altitude of 28 miles and then fell uncontrolled into the ocean. Those pieces were never meant to be retrieved. It was all over in six minutes." - bob from Bookmarklet

On 8 October an asteroid detonated high in the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia, releasing about as much energy as 50,000 tons of TNT, according to a NASA estimate released on Friday. That's about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed....The amount of energy released suggests the object was about 10 metres across, the researchers say. Such objects are thought to hit Earth about once per decade. http://www.youtube.com/watch... - bob from Bookmarklet

"Energy company Consolidated Edison and technology firm American Superconductor have signed an agreement to test a prototype power line as a step towards upgrading the power grid in New York. Under a project called Project Hydra, a power line could connect two substations in Manhattan using high-temperature superconducting cabling by 2010. The power lines developed by American Superconductor consist of several individual superconducting cables wrapped around a central tube filled with liquid nitrogen. This liquid nitrogen cools the cables until they experience zero electrical resistance, which allows them to carry up to 10 times more power than copper cabling of the same size." - bob from Bookmarklet

Just make sure you cut the power *before* the temp gets above -230C! - Gabe

? - Paul Buchheit

"When Randi was 15, he heard of a preacher in his hometown of Toronto who claimed he could read minds. Randi had been reading every book he could find on magic and illusions, so he thought he could figure out what trick the preacher was using on his flock. One Sunday morning, Randi watched the preacher set up a classic "one ahead" scam, using information obtained ahead of time to trick the crowd into believing he could read minds. Randi took the stage as he imagined his hero Houdini might have done and preached to the congregation about being duped, explaining the trick. He was immediately run out of the church." - bob from Bookmarklet

There's nothing more annoying than the truth. - Paul Buchheit

I first heard about him on Discovery Channel when they used to air show called Discover Magazine. - ashish

"My Taliban guards slept beneath bedspreads manufactured by a Pakistani textile company and emblazoned with characters from the American television show “Hannah Montana” and the movie “Spider-Man.” My blanket was a pink Barbie comforter. My captors railed against the evils of a secular society. In March, they celebrated a suicide attack in a mosque in the Pakistani town of Jamrud that killed as many as 50 worshipers as they prayed to God. Those living under Pakistan’s apostate government, they said, deserved it....Citing the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam, he said it was every Muslim’s duty to try to stop others from sinning. If one person in a village commits a sin, those who witness it and do not stop him will also be punished by God." - bob from Bookmarklet

I can understand torturing the guy and whatnot, but a pink Barbie comforter? Have they no compassion whatsoever? - Gabe

"The picture painted by Russell and Martin is striking indeed. The last common ancestor of all life was not a free-living cell at all, but a porous rock riddled with bubbly iron-sulphur membranes that catalysed primordial biochemical reactions. Powered by hydrogen and proton gradients, this natural flow reactor filled up with organic chemicals, giving rise to proto-life that eventually broke out as the first living cells - not once but twice, giving rise to the bacteria and the archaea." - bob from Bookmarklet

if real, quite interesting - bob from Bookmarklet

poor creatures :( - orie

Pretty cool. I also didn't know zero-g has an A300. - Paul Buchheit

Food, of course! - April Buchheit

I've been attacked by langurs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...) climbing up a hill somewhere near Shimla in India. We had some food in our backpacks and in the end we had to toss it away. - Deepak Singh

"The bodies of thousands of rabbits culled every year from the parks in Stockholm’s Kungsholmen neighbourhood are being used to fuel a heating plant in central Sweden....Last year marked a new record for Stockholm’s rabbit cull, with nearly 6,000 rabbits, mostly from Kungsholmen, being removed from Stockholm’s parks. But rather than simply disposing of the dead rabbits, the city instead froze them for eventual transport to a special heating plant in Karlskoga in central Sweden, where the bunny bodies are then burned as a form of bioenergy." - bob from Bookmarklet

The only reason I would do this is because they naturally freeze if you leave them outside in the winter and trucking them off to a plant that would use them for fuel is less work than digging a huge hole and burying them. - Gabe

"The new fan works by drawing air into the base of the machine. The air is forced up into the loop amplifier and accelerated through the 1.3mm annular aperture, creating a jet of air that hugs the airfoil-shaped ramp. While exiting the loop amplifier, the jet pulls air from behind the fan into the airflow (inducement). At the same time, the surrounding air from the front and sides of the machine are forced into the air stream (entrainment), amplifying it 15 times. The result is a constant uninterrupted flow of cooling air. The Dyson Air Multiplier is powered by an energy efficient brushless motor and air speed can be precisely adjusted with a dimmer switch. It will be available in two sizes, a 10-inch model costing $300 and a 12-inch model costing $330." - bob from Bookmarklet

"Aided by a bleak job market, the U.S. military met all of its recruitment goals in the past year for the first time since it became an all-volunteer force in 1973, the Pentagon said on Tuesday....The U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force sent a total of about 169,000 active duty recruits to training in the 2009 fiscal year that ended on September 30, beating their 164,000-member goal, the Pentagon said. National guard and reserve forces sent about 128,000 recruits to training, beating their goal." - bob from Bookmarklet

"Recruitment does not come cheap. On average, the military spends between $9,000 and $10,000 per recruit, a figure that includes the high cost of advertising and of employing thousands of recruiters across the country, Carr said. The Army spends far more, about $22,000 per recruit." - bob

oh no - where's thomas? - mike "glemak" dunn from iPhone

Awesome. - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

"In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars. The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years." - bob from Bookmarklet

We may need to liberate them if this plan goes through... - Paul Buchheit

WWRPT? (What Would Ron Paul Think?) - Jim Norris

"California's education system has become so poor so quickly that it is now effectively failing its future workforce. The percentage of 19-year-olds at college in the state dropped from 43% to 30% between 1996 and 2004, one of the highest falls ever recorded for any developed world economy. California's schools are ranked 47th out of 50 in the nation. Its government-issued bonds have been ranked just above "junk"." - bob from Bookmarklet

Living in California, Paying Taxes, Supporting a College Student here.. I say it is a serious failure.. - SCS Watching the Sun